236 THE WOODCOCK. 



House. The banks on each side of the rivulet appear to 

 have been originally planted with silver, scotch, and spruce 

 firs, but of these only a few giants now remain, towering 

 above their neighbours of a younger generation to the 

 height of upwards of one hundred feet. When a storm 

 of snow occurs with continued frost, the winter sun melts 

 the icy covering on spots exposed to his rays along the 

 sheltered southern slopes of the dean, and here the Wood- 

 cock may be occasionally found during the day, turning 

 over the fallen leaves and dead herbage in search of food. 

 In mild weather it sits concealed in the woods, and at 

 night resorts to swampy places and marshes in the neigh- 

 bourhood of its haunts to feed. 



No bird is more highly prized by the sportsman than 

 the Woodcock, not only on account of its variable flight, 

 which tries his skill with the gun, but also from its well- 

 known reputation as a luxury for the table. The uncer- 

 tainty when and where the bird will rise adds a further 

 zest to the sport, as it is frequently flushed unexpectedly, 

 and makes off amongst the trees with the speed of a 

 Sparrow Hawk. 



Right up he darts amongst the mingling boughs ; 



But bare of leaves they hide not from my view 



His fated form, and ere he can attain 



Th' attempted height, with rapid flight to cleave 



The yielding air, arrested by the shot, 



With shatter'd wing revers'd and plumage fair 



Wide scatt'ring in the wind, headlong he falls. 



Vincent, Fowling. 



When the covers in the neighbourhood of Legerwood 

 and Chapel were young, excellent sport was sometimes got 

 there with Cock, as many as twenty or thirty couple being 

 occasionally killed in a day's shooting.^ In some years 



1 Mr. Patterson, Ancrum Woodliead, informed me ou the 27th October 1887 

 that, about forty years before that time, he, in one day's shooting at the end of a 



